Inheritors of the Roman Empire
The era of the '''Inheritors of the Roman Empire' lasted from about 476 AD until 565 AD. It began with the ousting of Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. It then ended with the reign of Justinian the Great, whose achievements bear witness to the outstanding quality of Byzantine civilization, prior to the devastating Roman-Persian War and the rise of Islam. With the fall of the Western Empire, the map of Europe gradually settled into a new pattern. In the west, there gradually began to appear recognisable states no longer merely a collection of barbarian warbands. These so-called Barbarian Kingdoms spoke a Latin vernacular and had an emerging class of landowning military-aristocracy. These included Anglo-Saxon England, Visigothic Spain, Ostrogothic Italy, Vandal north-west Africa, and the outstanding example, the Frankish Realm. We should not underestimate the scale of cultural collapse; barbarian Europe was a much poorer place in material, economic, social, and intellectual terms than had been the empire of the Romans. Yet out of this confusion something quite new and immeasurably more creative than Rome would emerge in due course. The Christian Church was the most important institutional remnant to survive west of Constantinople. Gradually, the papacy in Rome began its rise to the splendid preeminence that would later be taken for granted in the medieval world. Meanwhile, her bishops were men with experience in administration, lettered men among a new unlettered ruling class, and naturally new tasks were thrust upon them. Meanwhile in the east, the remnant of the Roman Empire endured for centuries, usually henceforth called the Byzantine Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire had endured all the same interacting tensions that had brought about the fall of the west, albeit to a lessor extend. Its survival was largely thanks to a series of four very capable emperors beginning with Leo I (d. 474) and ending in the glorious reign of Justinian the Great (d. 565). Justinian's achievements, from his legal work to the magnificent Hagia Sophia, were remarkable by the standards of any leader in history. Even if his military reconquest of the west did not last, he behaved as people thought a strong emperor should, reuniting and restoring the old empire; after-all for a long time no one could conceive a world without it. History Western Collapse The centuries immediately following the fall of the Western Empire have traditionally been referred to as the "Dark Ages". The phrase originated in the 1330s with the Italian humanist Petrarch (d. 1374), who regarded the entire Middle Ages as dark, compared to the light of Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 18th-century, historians began restricting the term to the Early Middle Ages, and most modern scholars avoid it altogether due to its negative and judgemental connotations. While the term is out-dated, we must be careful not to understate the scale of political, economic, and cultural collapse in Western Europe; Europeans are not some sort of depressed class needing historical rehabilitation. Until the 11th-century, Western Europe was an almost insignificant backwater of world history. This was an time of regression, ignorance, and superstition. London and Paris were fetid firetraps, and even the greatest of European king was barely more than a warlord, to whom men clung for protection; or in fear of something worse. The other thing to be clear about at the outset is that the situation was very different outside Western Europe. The coming of Islam would remake the Middle East and Mediterranean, and under the Abbasid Caliphate, the Muslim world enjoyed an effervescence of culture unlike anything that had been seen since Classical Greece. Meanwhile China was having a Golden Age of its own under the Tang Dynasty, and by the 11th-century there was so much trade that coins couldn't be minted fast enough, leading to the world's first paper-money. In the Germanic invasions of the Western Roman Empire lie the origins of the first nations of modern Europe, though the barbarian peoples did not occupy areas that looked much like later states. There is some debate about how "barbarian" the different Gremanic people were by this time. Most had spent some time in Roman provinces before establishing independent kingdoms, had served alongside the legions as mercenaries, often wore Roman military style clothing, and had intermarried with Romans. Except in the northern most provinces they were all Christian of a sort. The 4th and 5th centuries were a major period of religious disagreement, with different groups arguing over the nature of God and accusing each other of heresy; the barbarians had almost all been converted to Arian Christianity, which was considered a heresy by the mainstream Church. This Romanisation made accommodation easier, and local Roman elites quickly came to terms with their new Germanic rulers, entering their courts and governing in as Roman a way as possible. Nevertheless, however Romanised the Barbarian Kingdoms were, a barbarian past left its imprint. The little we know of the Germanic peoples prior to their contact with the Romans reveals a settled society rather than nomadic, skilled at iron-working. They were a warrior societies, divided into a hierarchy of ranks; chieftains to sub-chiefs to warlords to clans to families. Bonds of family were very important, as were acts of personal bravery and honour. Of formal culture, they brought nothing with them to compare with antiquity. In almost all the Barbarian Kingdoms society was long and irreversibly shaped by Germanic custom. Firstly, the Germanic peoples did not call themselves "Roman", and clearly saw themselves as distinct from the Romans they conquered and ruled. This was a radical change from warlords of the past like Stilicho or Ricimer. Indeed the reverse happened; the Romans assimilated and began to see themselves as Visigoths and Franks. The second shift was towards a simpler economy in which the possession of land became the supreme determinator of social status. Like the provincial elites they were now dominating, the new Germanic military-aristocracy wanted to be landowners. This meant that it became less and less necessary to pay the now landed army, and taxation regimes could eventually shrivel away; when Justinian reconquered North Africa and Italy, he found that reestablishing the tax system was hard and unpopular. The barbarian kings instead relied on the revenues from their own lands, that were very extensive everywhere. Commerce in general decreased steadily, and inter-regional exchange was restricted to luxury goods by about 700; it was anyway unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance. Society thus became increasingly localised in outlook. Roman coinage was sometimes replaced by coins minted with the faces of Germanic kings, but for a long time there was simply not much coin about, especially of small denominations. Barter replaced money and a money economy emerged again only slowly. The third shift was that slavery gradually disappeared throughout Western Europe. It had not been generally practiced in Germanic society, except as a punishment for crimes. The Franks actually abolished the practice of trading Christian slaves around 658; Queen Balthild, the wife of Clovis II (639-658), had herself been enslaved as a young girl. Instead, the output of an appropriate number of peasants must underwrite the expenses of the military-aristocracy. Thus slavery was transformed into serfdom. And the last shift was that public assemblies were an important feature of all the post-Roman kingdoms. This was not a late Roman concept. Indeed assembles of the entire political community can be seen in Celtic, Slav and Scandinavian cultures, as much as in Germanic ones. These public assemblies were to weaken after 1000, but the idea of a legitimising community would remain potent, and echoed in parliamentary bodies which are so characteristic of the modern state. which was pessimistic; he thought the Frankish rulers had behaved so badly that their kingdom was doomed.]]Thus many of the key features that would characterise the Feudal System of medieval Europe were slowly falling into place. Nonetheless, out of this confusion of Germanic and Roman traditions something quite new and immeasurably more creative than Rome would emerge in due course. The hybrid character of the culture can be perhaps most clearly seen in their law code, which almost all the Barbarian Kingdoms moved towards codifying and writing down; one of the earlier was the Burgundian Code (516). The characteristic Germanic device for securing public order was the blood feud. Men, women, cattle, and property of all sorts had in a most literal sense their price. Wrongs done were settled by compensation, or if not forthcoming, by the involvement of a whole clan. By comparison with the Code of Justinian (534), these Germanic law codes were extremely narrow, dealing almost exclusively with crime, marriage, and inheritance. There was no point in publishing such written law codes, using devices such as Hammurabi's stone stele, since literacy was so rare; education had been one of the first things to disappear. Perhaps the first step along this journey to civilisation was the emergence of interpretations of the barbarian role in history. Examples include the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours (d. 594) and the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by ''the Venerable Bede (d. 735). In them they sought to reconcile traditions in which paganism was still strong, with Christianity and the idea of Rome itself. Christian Church In the West, the Christian Church was often the sole institutional survivor of the Roman Empire. The network of bishops that the Roman had established throughout the Empire were important in the late Empire, but it was in the Early Middle Ages that they really became major political players. The cities remained, and became increasingly important. As civilian administration crumbled, these were often represented by bishop, who were from leading local families in most cases. The Church was also rich in land donated by the faithful, putting bishops on a social par with the Germanic ruling-class. Semi-pagan kings and other royal officials looked on bishops with superstitious awe, and took them seriously as local political leaders. Furthermore, bishops were men with experience of administration, and lettered men among a new unlettered ruling-class, which craved the reassurance of sharing the classical heritage. Naturally, new tasks were thrust upon them; for the next thousand years, the most senior advisors of kings throughout Europe would often be clergymen. This was not all. Two new institutions had emerged in recent years, that would be a lifeline for the Church in the dangerous rapids between a civilisation which had collapsed, and one just being born. The first was Christian monasteries, a phenomenon that had first appeared in the East. In about 285 AD, St. Anthony (d. 356) retired to a hermit’s life in the Egyptian desert. His example was followed by others, and some of them drew together into communities. From there the idea spread throughout Christendom over the next century. In a crumbling society such as 5th-century Western Europe, the monastic ideals of withdrawal from society and undistracted service to God was very attractive to many men and women of character and intellect. The institutions prospered, and many of the greatest churchmen of the age were monks, among them St. Benedict, of whom we know little except his achievement. The Benedictine monasteries became the key source of missionaries for the conversion of pagan England, Germany and beyond. Monasteries also served as a crucial conduit for the preservation of Greco-Roman knowledge and literature, to be rediscovered by later generations during the Renaissance. The Church’s other new great support was what would become the papacy in Rome. The archbishop of Rome was still one of the five great bishoprics in the old Roman Empire, along with Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The prestige of St Peter’s See gave Rome a special place in Christendom, but something more was required for the papacy to begin its rise to the splendid preeminence which was taken for granted by the medieval world. To begin with there was the city itself; Rome had been seen for centuries as the capital of the world. Even more important was the fact that Rome was the only great bishoprics in the West, and the only one outside the Byzantine Empire. Bishops of cities throughout Christendom had long resisted claims of primacy by the five great bishoprics. But in a world turned upside-down by barbarians, the Western bishops became more willing to accept Rome’s claim. The Church and its leaders did not at first recognised the opportunity in disaster; they identified themselves with what was collapsing. The pope in whom the future medieval papacy is most clearly revealed was '''Pope Gregory the Great' (590-604). He was the first pope to come from a monastic background, thus bringing together the two great institutional innovations of the early Church. Significantly, Gregory did not speak Greek; nor did he feel he needed to. He was the first pope to fully accepted the barbarian Europe in which he reigned. He reasserted papal authority over Spain and France, re-energised the Church's missionary work including sending St. Augustine to pagan England in 595, and oversaw the realignment of the Barbarian Kingdoms away from the Arian heresy. He also resented interference from Constantinople, as much as from barbarian kings, thus beginning the subtle shift of the West Church towards a self-conscious independence. The 4th and 5th centuries were a major period of religious disagreement, with different groups arguing and accusing each other of heresy. Arguments particularly revolved around the mysteries at the very heart of the religion; reconciling Jesus' dual nature, both divine and human, yet one person; and the relationship of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to one another. Concepts such as the Trinity, "one God in three Divine Persons", were only very gradually accepted as the most satisfactory answer. In our secular age, it is difficult for us to fully comprehend the theological minutia of these early Church disputes, but religious divisions over the nature of God were rarely resolvable by compromise; in the Middle Ages they could cause war and bring down nations. In the 5th century, mainstream Christianity had to contend with three prominent heresies; or at least they were called heresies by the side that won. The first heresy was in the west and was called Arianism, '''the denial of the divinity of Christ. Arianism was deed heresy by the mainstream Church at the Council of Nicaea (325), but not before missionaries had firmly established the faith among many of the Germanic tribes; the Visigoths, Burgundians, Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Lombards. King Garibald of the Lombards (d. 671) was the last Arian kings in Europe. Another major heresy was in the east, centred in Egypt, and was called '''Monophysitism; a deliciously subtle debate difficult to explain. It would provoke long-standing sociopolitical disruptions within the Byzantine Empire. The efforts of the eastern Church to accommodate its Monophysite minority would play a part in the Great Schism of 1054, that ultimately split the Catholic Church from the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The third heresy was the Celtic Church in Ireland; strictly speaking this was not a theological heresy at all. The Celtic Church was simply isolated and cut-off from Rome, and it's structure evolved differently; since Ireland had few town that could be called cities, there was no tradition of bishops, and instead the basis of the Church were the great monasteries, wandering monks, and extremely isolated monastic communities. This ultimately played a part in the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1175, which Pope Adrian IV (d. 1159) authorised in order to bring Ireland into the mainstream fold. British Isles Roman Britannia was one of the first provinces to be abandoned in 407, and of cultural continuity there is virtually no trace. Towns were abandoned, trade declined precipitously, and artisanal production beyond the village level ceased almost completely. Even the language was to go, replaced by a Germanic tongue. The Roman heritage of the island of Britain was purely physical. It lay in the ruins of towns and villas, or the great constructions like Hadrian’s Wall, which people came to believe were the works of giants of superhuman power. Some of these relics, like the baths upon the thermal springs at Bath, disappeared from sight completely for hundreds of years, until rediscovered in the 18th-century. After the Roman withdrawal, the power vacuum didn’t go unnoticed. The Romano-British soon came under intense pressure from the Celtic Picts and Scots in the north, and Germanic tribes on the continent with Britain in their sights. They even sent an appeal for help known as the Groans of the Britons ''to the Western Roman Empire in 446, but no help was forthcoming. The main threat came from two Germanic tribal groups, the Angles of Jutland (modern day Denmark) and the Saxons (from modern day northern Germany); the name "England" is derived from the Old English for "''land of the Angles", and today the term Anglo-Saxon is still used to signify someone who is ethnically English. The advance of these more primitive and ferocious intruders was supposedly briefly halt by a victory at the Battle of Badon (c. 500) under the local warlord Ambrosius Aurelianus. In this, we may have a fleeting glimpse of the last spasms of Romano-British resistance in the legend of King Arthur; in its earliest version Arthur is associated with that battle. Nevertheless by the year 600, the fertile plains of what is now England were occupied by Anglo-Saxons (and others such as the Jutes), and their chieftains set about establishing themselves as regional kings. Gradually through the usual processes of warfare, marriage and inheritance, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms would coalesce into seven stable kingdoms by the 7th-century. Anglo-Saxon England was fringed by the Celtic world, which remained unaffected by the intruders; isolated Cornwall and mountainous Wales, as well as Scotland and Ireland which had never been Romanised. The Anglo-Saxons were pagans, and another aspect of Roman heritage to disappear was Christianity, with the keepers of the faith retreating to the misty fastnesses of the Celtic Church. Christianity was gradually reintroduced to England by missionaries from another Rome during the 7th-century. Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) sent missionaries to England to revive the faith in 595 led by St. Augustine (d. 604). Meanwhile missionaries also came to England from the Celtic Church, especially from Ireland. During Roman times, beginning about 431, missionary efforts had given the Christian religion a firmer footing in Ireland; notably those of St. Patrick (d. 461), the patron saint of Ireland. The 6th-century was a golden age for the Celtic Church in Ireland: the great Irish monasteries were established at Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, and Lismore, among others, from which the Celtic Church exerted its far-flung influence; scholars excelled in the study of Latin and Greek philosophy and Christian theology; and the arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished, producing such treasures as the Book of Kells and the many carved stone crosses that dot the "island of saints and scholars". Notably among the great Irish missionaries to Britain were St. Columba (d. 651) credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland and founding the great monastery of Iona, and also St. Aidan (d. 651), who with admirable energy and fervour restored Christianity to northern and central England, and still had time to establish the great monastery at Lindisfarne. Differences in usage between the Roman and Celtic Church did occasionally cause friction, especially over the calculation of the date of Easter. Perhaps this friction goes some way to explaining England's own golden age of Christianity between the mid-7th to the mid-8th centuries. The greatest thinkers of 8th-century Europe were both English; the historian the Verenable Bede (d. 735), and Alcuin (d. 804) who had a prominent role in the court of Charlemagne. By this stage, a synod of churchmen held at Whitby in 665 had pronounced in favour of adopting the date of Easter set by the Roman Church, determining that the future England would adhere to the Roman traditions, not the Celtic. France, Germany and Spain Across the Channel, things were very different; much survived. When Roman authority finally crumbled, Gaul lay in the shadow of the Visigothic Kingdom (418-720) of Aquitaine. Their prominent role in repelling Attila the Hun in 451 gave them greater importance than ever, and they energetically extended their own territory over much of south-western France, as well as campaigning south of the Pyrenees; Spain was at first of secondary importance. Aside from the Visigoths, Gaul was shared by several Germanic kingdoms and a remnant of the Empire: in the north-east, the Franks were the dominant political and military power on both sides of the lower Rhine; in the south-east, the Burgundians were settled in the Rhône valley and the area running south-east to modern Geneva; another group, the Alemanni occupied Alsace on the upper Rhine, between the Franks and Burgundians; in the north-west, British migrants from the Anglo-Saxon invasions established themselves in Brittany; and in the north, a rump state of the Western Empire survived the fall as Roman Soissons (457-486). As is evident from the works of the writer Sidonius Apollinaris (d. 490), the economy and lifestyle of Gaul remained remarkably resilient, and the Gallo-Roman cultural legacy was bequeathed intact to the successor-kingdoms. Indeed, the Germans themselves were to varying degrees Romanized. This influence was strongest among the Visigoths and Burgundians, who had lived within the Empire for a longer time; both were Christians of a sort. Yet somewhat ironically, the Gallo-Roman population viewed the pagan Franks and Alemanni less harshly, since they had not been converted by the heretical Arian branch of Christianity. Of all the Germanic peoples, it was the Franks who would most profoundly shape medieval Europe: the name France comes from the Latin version of their name, Francia or “''the land of the Franks''”; the great Charlemagne (d. 814 AD) was a Frank; and the Chinese used the term "Frank" as a synonym for Western European as late as the 16th century. Prior to the great barbarian incursions of 406, the Franks were already settled on the Empire's borders in what is today Belgium and Holland. As Roman power collapsed, they gradually expanded their power west into northern Gaul, taking the city of Tournai sometime in the 440s. The Franks were among the least Romanized of the Germanic peoples; they were still polytheistic pagans. And they were by no means a unified whole, and even in the late 5th-century, there were many Frankish petty-kingdoms on both sides of the River Rhine, that exercised a great deal of autonomy; these were based around cities such as Tournai, Cologne, Cambrai, among others. The fortunes of the Franks began with Clovis I (481-511), who inherits the throne of the Frankish petty-kingdom of Tournai when he was only fifteen; the third rule of a line descended from Merovech, who supposedly fought at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. Closis was a typical Frank, a warrior-king. At the Battle of Soissons (486), he conquered the last Roman rump-state in northern Gaul, extending his lands west to the Loire. This great victory allowed him to eventually unite all of the Franks under a single king for the first time, through an unscrupulous blend of warfare and intrigue. The next important step for the Franks was Clovis' marriage to a Burgundian princess. Unlike the rest of her people, she was a mainstream Christian, and Clovis embraced the faith himself. His conversion follows a classic Christian pattern, involving victory on the battlefield over the Alemanni; traditionally said to have happened in 496. The battle was followed by the mass-baptism of Clovis and 3,000 of his soldiers at Reims. There was no doubt political motives for his conversion: it would be extremely beneficial in securing the loyalty of his Gallo-Roman subjects; gave him the support of the Christian Church itself, the most important institutional power still surviving from the Empire; and spared Gaul the lengthy religious conflicts that occurred in other Germanic kingdoms. It also inspired newfound religious zeal for Clovis' wars against the Arian Visigoths. This crusade ultimately pushed the Visigoths out of Gaul by 507, except for a narrow strip along the Mediterranean coast. Meanwhile, Clovis' marriage did not prevent him from demanding an annual tribute from the Burgundians; it would be completely annexed after his death in 534. His kingdom thus encompassed almost all of Roman Gaul, as well as Belgium, Holland, and parts of western Germany. The Frankish capital was moved to Paris by Clovis and he was buried in the church he had built there, the first Frankish king not to be buried as a pagan barbarian. He is considered the founder of Merovingian Dynasty (457-752). To the French people, he is also the founder of France. But this was not the start of the continuous history of France. On his death, Clovis’ kingdom was divided according to the Frankish custom among his four sons; it was a pattern repeated in future reigns. Merovingian success continued in subsequent generations; they kept other barbarians out of Gaul, established hegemony over wide tracts of central Germany, and took lands north of the Alps from Italy, profiting from the Ostrogothic invasion of 488. They were less successful in northern Germany, where they often fighting against Saxony; occasionally turning them into tribute payers, but never for long. But the system of divided inheritance proved to be unstable and weakened the Merovingians in the long-term; it was unusual in the Barbarian Kingdoms. Brothers and cousins were prone to quarrel over ill-defined borders, and internecine civil wars were endemic. The Frankish kingdom was reunited after a bloody struggle in 558, only to break-up again three years. There was only one long period of unity, under Clotaire II (613-29), during the whole two centuries of the dynasty. Gradually, the Frankish realms settled down in four relatively stable sub-kingdoms: Austrasia in the north-east with its capital at Metz; Neustria in the north-west with its capital at Soissons; Aquitaine in the south-west with its capital at Toulouse; and Burgundy in the south-east with its capital at Lyon. When Clotaire reestablish Frankish unity, he only united the kingdom, not its four royal courts, and each of these became the focus of politics with a distinct character; Austrasia and Neustria tended to quarrel with Burgundy often acting as peacemaker. Frequent warfare also allowed power to seep away from the Merovingian monarchs towards the warrior-nobility, upon whose military support they relied. The nobility thus became political players on their own account, and it was from the most powerful of these nobles that the Carolingian Dynasty would emerge in the 8th century. The Carolingians would bring the Frankish realm to its peak under the great Charlemagne. In the west, the Franks had left the Visigoths virtually confined to Spain, where they established a new capital at Toledo. When Clovis the seize most of their territory in Gaul, they had not gained full control of Spain; other Germanic peoples, the Suebi, were already settled in the west, and there were the ever-independent Basques in the north. The rule of the Visigoths - and there were not so very many of them, roughly 200,000 - with a penchant for long-hair and gaudy jewellery, over a Hispano-Roman population of the several million was precarious. Its rugged terrain where local loyalties were strong presented quite special problems, as it has continued to do to all invaders and governments; in the centuries to come, Muslim Spain would never be able to dislodge the Catholic kingdoms of the north. The Visigoths held to the Arian heresy, and thus fused much less with existing society than had the Franks. Furthermore, when Clovis push the Visigoths out of Gaul, Visigothic King Alaric II (484–507) had been killed in battle. For the next half century, the nobility to quarrel over the succession so much that Byzantine rule was able to establish itself in the south from 554, and hold it for more than a half-century. It was only under Liuvigild (569-86) that political unity was restored and he subdued nearly the entire peninsula by force; all except the Byzantine coastal strip that was not retaken until the 620s, and the Basquelands. Liuvigild saw himself as a unifier in all respects. He issued a law code that contained the most Roman influenced legislation of any of the Barbarian Kingdom, granting equal rights between the Visigothic and Hispano-Roman population. His son finally renounced Arianism and reconciled with mainstream Christianity, allowing the merging of the two cultures to begin; the long tradition of Catholic monarchy in Spain also begins in 587. The impulse to unity henceforth took on a highly religious element, as it never did elsewhere. One result of this was laws persecuting Jews, the only religious minority left, which became ever more unpleasant across the next century; these anti-Jewish laws were easily the most severe anywhere in Europe until the 12th century. Everything seemed so serious to the Visigoths. They were never able to establish a stable dynasty, and successions to the throne were at best very tense, at worst violent. Internal divisions would eventually invite the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711. Byzantine Empire (457-518 AD) By tradition the Eastern Roman Empire is henceforth referred to as the Byzantine Empire '(330-1453), supposedly founded by Constantine the Great; it comes from Byzantium, the former name of Constantinople. Yet few terms have such misleading connotations as "''Byzantine". The Byzantines certainly wouldn't have recognised the term; they considered themselves Romans, the successors to the empire of Scipio Africanus, the empire of Julius Caesar, the empire of Trajan, and the empire of Diocletian. The terms came into use in the 16th-century and invokes all the prejudices of that time: in the midst of the Renaissance, Western Europeans were enamored with their Greco-Roman heritage, saw the whole medieval period as dark and barbaric, and the Byzantine Empire was considered unworthy of the glorious name of “''Roman''”. At the same time they wanted to condone the often bitter historical rivalry between Western Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire. Centuries later authors were still writing in the same vein; here is a quote from William Lecky (d. 1903), "Of that Byzantine empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed. There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet "mean" may be so emphatically applied ... The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude.." Unfortunately this view has persisted to the present day. The fall of the Western Empire certainly changed Constantinople, but the Romans had reinvented their empire numerous times; the Rome that went into the chaos of the Punic Wars, or the reign of Augustus, or the Crisis of the 3rd-Century, or the reign of Constantine the Great, was not the same Rome that came out, but it was still Rome. So too, the Byzantines were still Romans. It is futile to not to use the term, but we should remember that when Constantinople finally fell in 1453, it truly was the end of two thousand years of continuous Roman tradition. The Eastern Roman Empire had not seen the changes following the fall of the Western Empire with indifference, but troubles of their own hamstrung them in the fifth century. The Eastern Emperors were dominated by their Germanic generals too. This began to change under Emperor Leo I (457-474), the first of a series of four capable rulers who would oversee the survival of the Eastern Empire. As soon as Leo became Emperor, he began seeking new allies to curb the Germanic element in his army under a general of Alan descent called Aspar (d. 471). He instead favoured another influential group within the legions, the Isaurians. Isauria was a rugged isolated region in the mountains of central Anatolia (modern day Turkey), with a reputation for rough and barbarous folk; they still retained their own chieftains, though it had been conquered by the Republic way back in the 1st-century BC. To secure the loyalty of its people, Leo married his daughter to their chieftain; the future Emperor Zeno. Although the great campaign to conquer Vandal North Africa of 468 was an immensely costly fiasco, it provided Leo with his moment to strike. Summoning Aspar and his allies to the palace, he had them all executed, thus allowing the Isaurians to firmly supplant them in the legions. When Lea died three years later, '''Zeno (474-491) succeeded him; for the first year he was regent for his young son. He had much to thank his step-father for breaking free of powerful Germanic generals; the Western Empire, face with the same problem, was overthrown by the general Odoacer just two years into his reign. Zeno had no desire to allow such a usurper to reign, but with his own throne still shaky could do nothing about it. Nevertheless, he eventually came up with a brilliant solution. The Ostrogoths were now settled south of the Danube in the Balkans, within the Byzantine Empire. In 488, Zeno convinced their brilliant leader Theodoric (d. 536) to enter his service against Odoacer. Theodoric had lived in Constantinople during his youth. He would conquer Italy and rule it in the Eastern Emperor's name; the barbarians got a rich fertile land of their own, and Zeno ridded himself of the troublesome Goths. It took five years of fighting but eventually Odoacer was besieged in Ravenna; unable to take the city, Theodoric killed him with his own hand during supposed peace negotiations. Thus the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy (493-540) was establish in the most prosperous province of the former Western Empire, both economically and culturally. For the next 33 years, Theodoric ruled both wisely and well, bringing a period of calm and stability to the troubled peninsula. He never deviates from his arrangement with Constantinople; on his coins the only face was the Emperor of the East with the inscription "Unvanquished Rome". The Ostrogoths largely kept themselves apart from the Roman population, a tendency reinforced by their heretical Arian faith. The civilian administration continued to be staffed entirely by Romans, while the army remained the exclusive preserve of the Goths. Nevertheless, the arrangement suited everyone, including the papacy in Rome since Theodoric made no attempt to interfere in Church affairs; "We cannot order a religion, because no one can be forced to believe against his will." Theodoric was not blind to the fact that the rule of a barbarian in Italy was unacceptable to Constantinople in the longer term. He worked energetically to establish good relations with the other Barbarian Kingdoms; his daughters married a Visigothic king, a Burgundian prince, and a Vandal king, while he himself married the sister of King Clovis I of the the Franks. After Theoderic's death in 526, his achievements began to collapse. His inadequate successors eventually invited the Byzantine invasion of Italy in 535 under Justinian the Great. Meanwhile in Constantinople, the 17-year reign of Zeno the Isaurian was stormy throughout, plagued by domestic coups and revolts; he was deposed by a usurper in 575, but recovered the throne 20 months later. For all his unpopularity, he left the Byzantine Empire more stable than he had found it, working tirelessly to strengthen the state. His legacy was not that the Empire prospered, but that it survived the fall of the West, and with the legions now firmly under imperial control. He spent his last years trying to solve one of the endemic religious controversies so common in Byzantine history; this time to reconcile the mainstream Church with the Monophysite heresy popular especially in Egypt. He was so spectacularly unsuccessful that it provoked a 35-year schism between the archbishops of Constantinople and Rome; an early step in the tragic relationship between the East and West that would end in the permanent breach of the Great Schism in 1054. On his death, it was left to his widow, the daughter of Leo I, to pick his successor. With the people of Constantinople crying "give the Empire an Orthodox Emperor, give the Empire a Roman Emperor", she chose the aged minister of finance, Anastasius (491-518), a native citizen of impeccable breeding. His ascension provoked a revolt by the Isaurian, but once this was suppressed, he proved himself as an energetic reformer and an able administrator. He finally completed the monetary reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, by introducing a new stable copper coinage; Constantine’s gold coin had only really benefited the very wealthy. This combined with a long reign during which the Empire was at peace, other than a brief war with Sassanid Persia (502–505), had a number of positive effects: it allowed the return of taxation based on hard currency rather than kind, much easier to track and thus crack-down on corruption; soldiers pay also returned to hard currency, which helped attract native Byzantines back to service in the legions; and middle-class merchants and commerce began to thrive again. His greatest contribution to the Empire was the huge treasury that he left for Justinian to exploit. Byzantines under Justinian (518-565 AD) After a 27 years reign, Anastasius died without nominating an heir. It was the Praetorian Guard who elevated the new emperor, Justin I (518-527), the well-respected commander of the palace guard. As a career soldier with little knowledge of statecraft, Justin wisely surrounded himself with trusted advisor, most notably his nephew and adopted son Justinian. Two years before ascending to the throne Justinian the Great (527-565) persuaded his uncle to allow him marry Theodora, a strong-willed woman of humble birth; a former actress and occasional courtesan. They became emperor and empress, sharing an almost equal role in running the empire. Justinian came to power full of ideas, full of confidence, and full of energy; he was known as "the emperor who never sleeps". Nevertheless, early in his reign he nearly lost his throne during the Nika Riots (532). Justinian had big plans, and one of his first acts on becoming emperor was a systematic streamlining of the tax system, that made him quite unpopular with the people. Popular resentment boiled over after a minor incident at the chariot races in the Hippodrome. Chariot racing inspired fanatical enthusiasm, and fighting was commonplace between the supporters of the two teams of charioteers. When Justinian punished both factions after a violent clash, it united the two sets of supporters for the first time in common cause. For five days, the rioters looted and burned every building they could force their way into, and it took another two-day crackdown for Justinian to restore order. It was the most violent riots in the city's history, with nearly half of Constantinople being destroyed and tens-of-thousands of people killed. Yet this provided the young emperor with an opportunity to cement his legacy in stone, with a host of splendid new buildings. It included one of the world's most spectacular buildings, the Basilica of the Hagia Sophia, that achieved with triumphant skill the feat of placing an expansive circular dome on top of a square formed of four great arches. It was inaugurated just 5 years 10 months after construction start, and remained the largest cathedral in the would for nearly a thousand years, until the Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. Meanwhile, Justinian was already busy with a new project, having befriended an extraordinary lawyer named Tribonian (d. 542). Roman law was a chaotic morass of a thousand years of confusing and often conflicting legal rulings. Together these two men set about a complete revision of all Roman law, removing the obsolete and contradictory, and clarify what remained in clear, comprehensive, and concise terms. The Code of Justinian (529-534) ''formed the basis of later Byzantine law, eventually spreading to Western Europe by the 11th-century, to become the basis for most European legal systems today; it was an inspiration for the famous Napoleonic Code of 1804. After 532, Justinian ruled more firmly than ever before, which left him finally free to fulfill his greatest ambition, the reconquest of the Western Roman Empire. The story of Justinian's spectacular military career is really the story of his greatest general, Belisarius (d. 565); a man that Edward Gibbon called the Scipio of the Byzantine Empire. He first rose to prominence in the east, where Justinian had inherited ongoing hostilities with Sassanid Persia, over the buffer state of Iberia to the north of Armenia; the '''Byzantine-Persian War' (526-532). As commander of the eastern legions, Belisarius demonstrated his brilliance with a campaign that culminated in the stunning victory over the Sassanids at the Battle of Dara (530). Although it was followed by a stalemate at the Battle of Callinicum (531) with heavy losses on both side, it did eventually lead to negotiations that concluded an "Eternal Peace" with the Persians; it would last just eight years. With his eastern frontier secure, Justinian turned to the reconquest of the west, dispatching Belisarius to bring an end to the most troublesome of the Barbarian Kingdoms, the piratical Vandal Kingdom of north Africa; the Vandalic War (533-534). Success came with surprising ease. The Vandals were caught completely off-guard when Belisarius' army of some 16,000 men landed in north Africa, with much of the Vandal army away dealing with a revolt in Sardinia. The Vandals were defeated in battle just outside the walls of Carthage, and Belisarius entered the city in triumph. The Vandals did manage to regroup, but were again defeated, this time decisively; the Vandals had no answer to the Byzantine cavalry largely made up of former Huns. The gain-rich Roman province of north Africa had been recovered, and would remain part of Byzantine territory until conquered by the Muslims in the late 7th-century. The easy with which north Africa had been brought back into the empire, encouraged Justinian to press on to the ultimate goal of bringing Italy back under direct imperial rule; the long and protracted Gothic War (535–554). Imperial resources were now overstretched, with many legions tied-down in north Africa which remained troubled for the next 15 years; the Vandals had themselves endured decades of incessant fighting against the desert Moors of north-west Africa. Belisarius invaded the Italy with barely 8,000 men. Nevertheless, when Theodoric had died in 526, he was succeeded by his infant grandson, and without a strong heir the Ostrogothic Kingdom had begun to collapse. Belisarius conquered Sicily with barely an effort, and from there moved quickly north, subduing city after city, until he finally captured Rome itself in December 536. Gaining Rome however was one thing, holding Rome was another. The Ostrogoths soon regrouped, and Belisarius found himself besieged in Rome for over a year, until reinforcements could arrive and drive-off the attackers. The Ostrogothic Kingdom, while not defeated, had been dealt a blow from which it would not recover. But this as it turned-out was high-point of Belisarius' career. Back in Constantinople, the success and growing popularity of Belisarius had stoked the paranoia and jealousy of Justinian and Theodora. Another capable general, the eunuch Narses (d. 573), was sent to Italy in June 538 to keep an eye on him. The divided command only hampered the campaign and undermined Belisarius' authority with his subordinates, until Justinian was persuaded to recall Narses the following year. Afterwards, Belisarius quickly consolidated his control of northern Italy, and in May 540 captured the Ostrogothic capital of Ravenna in 540. With seemingly nothing remaining to do in Italy but some mopping-up, Belisarius was urgently recalled to deal with a new threat in the east. The denuded Byzantine defences had proven too tempting for the Persians under their ambitious new Khosrow I (531-79). He raided Syria in 540 and sacked Antioch, the third largest city of the empire, sparking the Byzantine-Persian War (540-545). Belisarius had some success in the east, but the war largely petered-out due to a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague, that swept through both the Byzantine and Persian empires. The Plague of Justinian started in Egypt in 541, and reached Constantinople the following spring, killing some 40% of the city's inhabitants. In total it killed perhaps a quarter of the population of the Eastern Mediterranean, with lessor outbreaks recurring periodically until 750. The plague's social and cultural impact has been compared to that of the similar Black Death that devastated Europe 600 years later. Most devastating of all, Justinian himself was struck-down, though he would later recover. While the emperor was incapacitated, Theodora became acutely aware of her precarious grip on power and paranoia took over again. Belisarius was stripped of his command in disgrace, although he would eventually be recalled as the situation in Italy went from bad to worse. After Belisarius had left Italy in 540, the Ostrogoths had regrouped again, this time under a shrewd new king, Totila (d. 552). Totila proved himself both a skilled military and political leader, gaining popular support from the Italian lower classes, who had never been alienated by the Ostrogoths and bitterly resented the higher taxes of the Byzantines. He defeated every imperial force sent against him, and by the summer of 543 virtually the whole of Italy was under his control, except the cities of Rome, Ravenna, and Florence. In desperation, Justinian recalled Belisarius and sent him back to Italy again with some 4,000 men. His second Italian campaigned was five long and frustrating years. Denied supreme authority and enough resources, he could do little more than preserve what the Byzantines already held. It eventually fell to Belisarius' old nemesis Narses to finally secure Italy for the Empire. The arrival of Narses with an army of 35,000 men in 551 marked another shift in Gothic fortunes. The Ostrogoths were defeated decisively at the Battle of Taginae (June 551), where Totila himself was slain. They elected another king, but he was killed in October, and this was the end for the Ostrogothic Kingdom, though pockets of resistance held out for several more years. This all of the land of its birth was once more back under imperial rule, albeit an Italy devastated by the imperial armies, as it had never been by the barbarians; Rome itself was little more than a ruin having swapped hands five times during the course of the war. Meanwhile in 551, Justinian had also established a presence in southern Spain, where a local rebellion against the squabbling Visigoths was helped by a tiny imperial armies to again set-up imperial government in Córdoba. Moreover throughout the western Mediterranean, too, the imperial fleets were supreme, and for the next century Byzantine ships could move about unmolested. Toward the end of his reign, Justinian to some extent withdrew from public affairs, while he occupied himself in a futile attempt to reconcile the Orthodox Church with the Monophysite heresy which dominated Egypt. He died at the age of 83 of a heart attack. In retrospect Justinian's reign seems something of a failure. What might Justinian and Belisarius have achieved together, had it not been for petty jealousies. And his reconquest of the West did not last. By 572 most of Italy was gone again, this time to another Germanic people, the Lombards, with the Byzantines only able to retain some coastal cities that could be supplied by her strong fleet. Byzantine Spain held-out a little longer, until 624 when it was reconquered by the Visigoths. Nevertheless, Justinian behaved as people thought a strong Byzantine Emperor should, reuniting and restoring the old empire; after-all no one could conceive a world without it. People thought the Empire now stood on the brink of a new and glorious age where it would regain and even surpass all of its former glory. Yet the protracted wars had laid a heavy burden on the empire's dwindling manpower and tax-base in the wake of the plague, leaving it vulnerable, to the Persians, to barbarian pressure on the Danube, and to a dangerous new rival, Islam. Category:Historical Periods